COLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY CONFERENCE EUKARYOTIC mRNA PROCESSING AUGUST 20 - 24, 2019 ABSTRACT The proposed conference on ?Eukaryotic mRNA Processing? will convene scientists studying various aspects of mRNA processing, transport, turnover and bioinformatics. Major advances have recently been made in all these areas, and the proposed conference will be a timely event for discussing the latest unpublished results and exchanging ideas, thereby fostering new developments in this rapidly moving field. The proposed conference will be the twelfth meeting in the series that is held every other year at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. The most recent meeting was held in August 2017 and attracted 329 scientists internationally, who are actively investigating various aspects of messenger RNA maturation in eukaryotic cells using genetic, biochemical, molecular, and cell biological approaches. As in the previous meetings, a major focus will be on nuclear events in mRNA maturation, including mRNA splicing and polyadenylation, the connections between transcription and mRNA maturation steps, small RNA biogenesis and function, the application of informatics and genome-wide approaches to the analysis of RNA processing, as well as the relevance of mRNA processing to the etiology of cancer and other diseases. We propose eight plenary sessions and two poster sessions. Each plenary session will be subdivided into two parts (separated by a coffee break) that focus on related but separate topics. In response to major developments in the fields of RNA modification and the roles of RNA structure in processing, we have expanded the sessions devoted to these topics; this adaptability to the major movements in the field helps keep this meeting at the cutting edge and ensures that we will draw participants from traditional as well as emerging areas of RNA research. This subdivision, successfully piloted at the 2011 meeting, allows a broader representation of fields and we have recruited a diverse set of leaders in the field as session chairs. As always, all speakers will be selected on the basis of the submitted abstracts, which encourages active participation by junior scientists. We will particularly encourage presentation of unpublished work by the students and postdoctoral fellows who are leading these projects, as has traditionally been a hallmark and a unique strength of the Cold Spring Harbor meetings.